2021 Book Round Up
Like most of us, my 2021 was a mixed bag of successes and disappointments. You’ve caught me in a rested, happy moment, so we’ll just skip over all the terrible things and get right to some good news—I read more books this year than I ever have!
When the dust settled in my spreadsheet, I was delighted to learn that I finished 174 books.
It would be easy for me to talk about all the goals I didn’t reach as some kind of “I’m proud of myself for doing this great thing, but I have to downplay it by talking about all the goals I didn’t reach or things I didn’t accomplish,” but let’s make a deal, okay? Let’s stop doing that.
If you were the top seller in your company, own that.
If you ran more miles than you ever have, good for you.
If you changed your body in a healthy way, way to go.
If you did something else that brought you immense joy, rest in that feeling of accomplishment.
And let’s all stop downplaying these things by adding caveats like, “I may have done this great thing, but I didn’t do ________.” We get to be happy about the good things in our lives, okay?
Okay.
Now that you’ve had your daily pep talk, here’s a little breakdown of my 2021 book list. Some basics: my list this year was 75% from white authors, 69% from women authors, and 76% from authors from the United States. This is less diverse in those three categories than I’ve read in previous years, and there’s one big reason. I had a few authors on the list whose name popped up repeatedly because I read entire series and/or catalogs from said authors.
In fact, eight authors (Ellery Adams, Sharon Creech, John Green, Sally Hepworth, Deanna Raybourn, Phoebe Robinson, Jennifer Ryan, and Jessica Townsend) who fit either two or three of those categories (white, woman, United States) made up 18% of my list because I read three or more of their books this year.
Here are a few other stats in pie form that you might find interesting:
As you can see, almost 91% of my books were audiobooks this year—by far the highest ever. I owe this to being a professional driver for my four favorite humans who have to be all the places all the time. Other records I probably broke this year: miles on my minivan and gallons of gas purchased.
Genre-wise, I wasn’t surprised at all to see I read mostly books written in 2011 or later (with 22% published in 2021). I also wasn’t surprised to see that non-fiction and memoir made up 38% of my list. I am always generous with my stars and averaged 4.21/5 stars on Goodreads overall.
A note about how I rate books: I mostly rate based on *my reading experience.* Did I enjoy it from start to finish? Did it move me? Did I want more when I finished or have a deep feeling of satisfaction? Did I check to see how much I had left to read at any point because I was getting bored? Did I learn something I didn’t know? Can I think of someone in my life who should read this? That’s how I can read a YA romance, a book about jellyfish, and an actress’ memoir and give them all five stars (or 2 stars if I can’t answer yes to any of those questions, but the writing/content/subject matter is fine or simply not terrible).
And finally here are my recommendations from the year. I scanned the list and am including anything I loved for one reason or another because life is too short to limit myself to a certain number, and I’m the boss of me.
That’s it for this year! Let me know if there’s something I need to read next year. Connect with me on Goodreads if you’d like to see my complete list. Happy reading, friends!